Lew: "There were some political games that were played, that took it off the trail and path to completion, where Republicans put it out there as something that was put on a timetable that it could not be resolved. It caused a delay'

'Alberta has reserves on the order of 170 billion barrels of oil locked in the tar sands. Left alone, the tar sands are worth nothing. But excavated and processed into crude oil, they are worth (at today’s prices) more than $100 per barrel — i.,e, $17 trillion. That is a lot of wealth to create out of nothing — wealth that can create a lot of jobs.'